[negative_zero]

Just want to add some nuance:

STV is used for the Australian Federal Senate.

The federal lower chamber (House of Representatives) uses optional preferential voting for candidates in a federal electorate.

I'm not sure if NZ is a fair comparison as it uses MMP, which is deliberately designed to favour multiple parties forming coalitions, not independents.

[defrost]

I didn't clarify as there's even more of a mix of ranked vote variations than that in Australia.

STV is also used in many state and territory local and state elections, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Use

and scroll down to "local bodies" | Australia for a partial list.

The take home poin is that straight up simple Ranked Vote has an issue but is still (IMHO) better than FPTP and there are many ways to take the (minor) curse off of Ranked Vote to make it "better" (far less likely to hit a weird box corner that'll cause arguments | riots | civil war).

I mean, seriously, it's about electing|hiring people to work for the public, in the worst case we should at least just reset and restart, it's not life or death, it's just hiring a few managers that can be fired at any time or charged and imprisoned if they graft or steal.

[ClayShentrup]

i co-founded the center for election science. this is superficially reasonable, but IRV could paradoxically make things worse by squandering election reform resources (namely, money) on a suboptimal and overly complex fix, at the cost of progress on approval voting, score voting, etc. then, if IRV gets repealed often due to its complexity, we end up worse off. alaska is plausibly going to repeal IRV this november.

[rstuart4133]

Australian here.

> if IRV gets repealed often due to its complexity,

Politicians of all stripes have introduced a mix of voting systems here, but remains it is predominantly IRV. When it is changed from IRV complexity is never the reason. It would be surprising if it was, because it isn't that complex and besides complexity doesn't worry the computer systems doing the counting.

The reason is always political: the mob in power chooses the system that benefits them. Invariably when they tinker with the voting system one side is fragmented (eg, there are two conservative parties) and one is not. IRV favours the fragmented one. So if that is the situation and the non-fragmented one is in power, then water down IRV in favour of FPP. If the fragmented one is in power the reverse happens.

The argument proffered in favour of returning to FFP is always "simplicity". It is a lie. They are never doing it to make things simple. They are doing it to keep themselves in office. If you give them the power to change the voting system at the stroke of a pen, they will do it regardless of whether it's IRV, Ranked voting or any other system.

Personally, I'd rank the voting systems from worst to best as FPP, just about anything other the FPP (the difference in outcomes is marginal), and MMP is best of all. The difference between the first two is a bit academic when you allow gerrymandering and don't have compulsory voting like the US. When you can change the rules on who is allowed to vote and where, it's so much easier to do that than change the voting system. MMP makes the system much harder to manipulate like that, and it is harder to undo because usually requires a constitutional change to set up.

[ClayShentrup]

> When it is changed from IRV complexity is never the reason

it's a reason why voters vote YES to repeal it.

> The argument proffered in favour of returning to FFP is always "simplicity". It is a lie.

you're talking about politicians. the more crucial side of the equation is _voters_, who have to vote on whether to repeal it.

[negative_zero]

100% agree. IMO, these days it seems like FPTP is more actually a source of instability (than stability it is often claimed is one of it's benefits).